Lab regulations

Lab Regulations

We ask that you respect the following rules when using the Computing Lab. These rules are here for a good reason -- either to protect you, or to allow you and your fellow students to use the Lab most effectively.

These facilities are for the exclusive use of Department of Computing staff, and students registered on Department of Computing courses. Do not enable anyone else to gain access to the labs, computers or printers.

The computers and printers are to be used for academic work only. Anyone found printing for college clubs and societies, or doing personal printing, will be charged at 20p per sheet -- please use the College Printing service, or the services available in the Union SAC instead.

Except if you are specifically directed as part of a lab, please do not reboot or turn off any of the workstations running Linux only. The Linux workstations are multi-user systems, and other users may be logged in. Also, if any workstation is rebooted without being cleanly shut down, serious damage to the disk file structure can result, and it may mean that the operating system will need reinstalling.

Do not lock workstations for more than a few minutes (30 minutes MAXIMUM). Log out from the workstation if you are leaving for a longer period of time.

If you need to run programs that will run for days, or programs that are massively distributed (and thus might use a significant percentage of space and time on many machines) please read our Long Running Processes guide first, and then contact CSG (in advance of running your programs) for advice. Long running processes on lab machines may be summarily killed, especially if they are affecting the service for other users.

When you log out, please use the "Log Out" function of your desktop environment rather than forcibly restarting X. Not logging out properly can stop your account working correctly.

The Department's mailing lists may be used only for relevant Departmental purposes. This does not include personal messages, lost property, political or other messages. You must request the Senior Tutor or Course Director's permission before emailing any year or course list. Students must not email "doc-all-students@imperial" or "doc-all-doc@imperial".

The use of peer-to-peer software itself is not prohibited, however, it is your responsibility to ensure that the content you download (and hence share) via this medium is legal and that you are permitted to do so. For example, using peer-to-peer to download a Linux distribution is fine; using peer-to-peer to download commercial software, movies or games is not acceptable.

IRC bots, relays and idle-clients are not permitted on any DoC system.

Do not interfere with any of the connections or cabling of the equipment. In particular, please don't detach USB mice or keyboards to use with laptops.

Please make backup copies of all your important files. CSG will backup data stored in your home directory, but for particularly important data (e.g. individual projects, ISOs) you should have a backup either somewhere off-site (eg on gitlab or github) or on removable media.

Please try to maintain a quiet environment. The student representatives have asked that Lab 210 be made a "quiet lab": do not make any unnecessary noise, and please silence mobile phones in this lab. If you need to discuss work, please work in one of the other rooms.

The computers are not to be used for playing games.

While "reasonable personal use" of lab workstations is permitted, at busy times you should be prepared to give up your workstation to other students needing to do academic work. Timetabled labs have absolute priority, and staff may ask you to leave the labs or move to another room.

Food and most drinks are absolutely not allowed in the labs. You may take a bottled drink (such as a bottle of water) into the labs. Please take all food and spillable drinks (eg. tea, coffee, fizzy drinks) into the Student Common Room. Food can be summarily confiscated and you referred to the Senior Tutor.